Weighing Me Down
by Frankie McStein
Summary: Prompt fill- Character A must do something awful to Character B to save them from something worse. It should have been a simple little case but it ended in a blaze of gunfire. Now Magnum is bleeding out and Higgins will do whatever it takes to keep him alive. Even if the guilt may kill her.


It had seemed like such a simple plan: tail the bad guy (in this case, a Mr. Everett Roe), find the boat he had hidden his ex-wife's jewelry on, sneak onto said boat and recover said jewelry, make bank. Or rather, make what passes for bank when you charge roughly half of the next cheapest private investigator on Oahu. Possibly across the entire Hawaiian Islands chain. Higgins made a slightly blurry mental note to check on the prices of every P.I. within a 400-mile radius when they got back to Robin's Nest. Then she looked down at Magnum, hideously pale, and amended the thought.

'_If_ we get back.'

She wanted to push it away. Maybe she could pretend the idea had never crossed her mind. Maybe, if she tried hard enough, she could pretend that their bad guy hadn't started firing at them and taken out the engine of their boat. Maybe, if she closed her eyes, she could pretend Magnum hadn't gotten hurt trying to shield her from the spray of bullets that had raked their little boat as they had sat dead in the water. Maybe, if she focused every ounce of her willpower, she could pretend that she hadn't had to drag him out of the water while he pleaded with her to stop. Maybe, if she put every fibre of her being into it, she could pretend that she wasn't huddled in some long-abandoned shack on a tiny spit of land with Magnum potentially bleeding out in her arms.

They'd been in the water long enough and his still-bleeding head wound had been serious enough that she had been forced to tow him to shore in a rather graceless parody of her own rescue at his hands. The entire time she had been carrying his weight, she had offered up thanks to whatever force was listening that she had taken to swimming with Magnum on a regular basis, knowing it was the only reason she had been able to get them both out of the water. The one good thing about the whole messed-up situation was that she'd had the presence of mind to grab the first aid kit before they'd abandoned ship. Apparently, her long association with the man had taught her that, if a first aid kit was present, it would more than likely be needed.

She kept one hand on Magnum's chest as she wrestled the kit open; he was shifting around and muttering. The snatches she could hear clearly made her stomach clench. Wherever he thought he was, it certainly wasn't somewhere safe. The pain of her putting pressure on the wound made him gasp and flinch away. She thought, when she looked up and saw him staring at her, that he had come back to himself.

"He's too badly injured." His voice was shockingly loud, but the words didn't make much sense. For all that she would joke about his ego, Magnum wasn't given to speaking about himself in the third person.

"Magnum?" She kept her voice low; she was pretty sure Roe wasn't looking for them, but pretty sure and certain were two different things.

"Don't. Please." The fear and desperation in his voice made her heart break.

"It's okay, Thomas. I know it hurts, but I have to stop the bleeding." She ducked as his one hand waved in a vague approximation of a punch.

"No! He's too weak." His head dropped back onto the floor, and his hand skittered over the rough, salt-bleached boards, seeming to search for something.

Higgins leaned closer to try to make out what he was mumbling.

"Rick… Don't… don't take…"

Higgins felt bile rise in her throat as she finally put two and two together and figured out where Magnum's mind had taken him.

"Rick isn't here," she told him, hoping her voice sounded more soothing to him than it did to her; she could hear the fear rolling beneath the words. "It's just you and me. And we're on Oahu." She didn't think anyone would object to the slight exaggeration. "We're safe. _You're_ safe." That was a big enough of an exaggeration to be called a lie, but she still didn't think anyone would mind.

"Don't… you can't…" He was moving more, and she lost her grip on his leg. The second he twitched the injured limb, he gave a strangled cry and planted his hands on the floor.

"No, Magnum stop!" Higgins didn't even bother trying to sound calm. He was trying to pull himself along the floor, to get away from her, and the tension in his muscles had made a new rivulet of blood seep from the bullet wound. She tried to push him to the floor, but he writhed beneath her hands.

He dragged his feet up, setting his heels, and bucked, tipping her to the side.

She landed heavily and cried out as the force sent fire racing around her wrist, but she didn't have time to worry about it. Magnum was still trying to move and still begging her to leave Rick alone and… Higgins felt sick at the very idea. But she was also terrified by the sheer amount of blood that was smudging over the old wood. She crawled over to Magnum; his hands were still pushing at the floor, but his injured leg was sprawled out uselessly, and he didn't seem to have the energy to make any progress.

"Thomas, please, listen to me," Higgins begged, wanting to stay away from the idea that had popped into her head but unable to shake it. "You have to hold still."

He shook his head frantically, hands coming up with surprising speed and force to shove her away again. Her head hit the floor hard enough to make her vision shake, and she gasped at the pain. She heard an answering cry from Magnum and forced herself up again.

"You can't take him!" he yelled, trying to sit himself up, and Higgins could see a pool of blood forming beneath him. If he lost enough blood to pass out here, he might never wake up again.

"Sit still, or I will shoot your friend!" she snapped in as harsh a tone as she could manage. She couldn't bring herself to say Rick's name, feeling nauseous as the words dropped from her lips.

But they worked. Oh how they worked. Magnum's entire body seemed to deflate. He sunk to the floor without so much as a gasp, although his leg twitched at the movement. He didn't move as she used the tiny pair of scissors from the kit to slice through the leg of his pants. He didn't move as she poured more of the disinfectant over his leg. He didn't move as she pressed a piece of gauze down over the hole that had been torn in his skin. She tried to pay attention to his breathing, to ease up slightly as it grew rapid and shallow. But, as she lifted the gauze to check on the bleeding, she noticed some fabric trapped inside the wound.

It felt risky, taking both hands off Magnum to dig the tweezers out of the kit, shake them out of their frustratingly tight package. But Magnum still didn't move. Until his entire body jerked as she pressed down on the tweezers, and it was her turn to freeze as fresh, bright red blood welled up around them.

"Stay still!" Her mind was racing with a list of all the damage she could cause by prodding around. She'd had enough medical training to remove a bullet, patch up an entry wound, even stitch a cut made by a knife. But if she ripped into his muscle or tore open an artery… She forced the thought out of her head. It didn't bear thinking about. Magnum would be fine; she would make sure of it. If he would just stop moving, so she could clean this mess up.

"Rick…" Now his hands were going again, nails skittering on the wood, the sound burning down through Higgins' already badly frayed nerves.

"I will shoot him." She could hear the misery in her own voice, knew that no one in their right mind would believe for even a second that she could carry out any such threat.

But Magnum wasn't in his right mind. He sucked in a deep breath and held it, as if trying to steel himself against whatever was about to happen.

Higgins took full advantage of his newfound stillness, working as quickly as she dared, desperate to avoid having to issue more threats. She got the bullet wound cleaned out and managed to lift his leg high enough to get it tightly wrapped.

Magnum didn't react at all beyond a few quickly smothered groans. Higgins never even noticed the tears that were trickling down her face.

...

Higgins knew that, for Magnum, being stuck in hospital even for a day was a trial. He hated the sounds and the smells and the memories they carried with them. He despised being woken at odd intervals to be poked and prodded. He didn't like the food or mattresses or pillows and, no matter how often he was teased about getting soft, he refused to accept that Higgins hadn't purchased some sort of magic bedding for the guest house.

But for Higgins, it felt like a reprieve. She didn't know how to face him after what she had done. He had been in hell and, instead of helping him, she had kept him there. To make things easier for herself. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself that she had no choice, that he would have died if she hadn't, the sick feeling didn't leave. It really didn't help that, in the thirty or so hours since they had been rescued, everyone kept telling her what a good job she had done of keeping Magnum alive.

"You saved his life, Higgy." Said with an admiring look to hammer home the awe she had inspired.

"He would never have made it without you." Said with a wonder-filled head shake to make sure she knew how incredible she had been.

"I can't imagine how you did it." She was nearly physically sick at the words.

'_I did it by trapping him in a nightmare!"_ she wanted to scream. '_I did it by torturing him!'_ But she kept quiet. How could she tell anyone what a heinous thing she had done when they were all just so happy Magnum was okay? So thankful that he had, once again, survived something that could so easily have taken him from them.

She had dreaded having to try to share the estate with him and was selfishly glad that he was being kept in after she had been discharged. She wasn't happy that she had walked away with nothing more than a few minor bumps and bruises and a fractured wrist while he had suffered muscle damage from the bullet as well as a pretty serious concussion. But she was glad she didn't have to try to explain herself to him.

Part of her knew she was making things worse by dragging it all out. She should just go to his hospital room and try to explain. And watch as the three men who had somehow become so important to her turned their backs on her in disgust. Stand and stammer while everything she cared about was ripped away from her all over again. She had felt the pain of having her world burned down once before, and she didn't think she was strong enough to deal with that kind of agony again.

So when T.C. had called that morning and asked if she wanted him to drive her to the hospital she had begged off, claiming the painkillers had made her sick. It wasn't a total lie; she really had sat up all night after being discharged with a rolling in her gut that had made it impossible to sleep or eat. No need to tell him that she hadn't taken any painkillers and that the nausea was her own guilt eating away at her.

She hadn't expected Rick and T.C. to come over to Robin's Nest after visiting hours ended.

"T.C. said you sounded pretty bad on the phone." Rick was eyeing her with a concerned look on his face. "You really don't look too good, Higgy. No offense."

It was meant to be funny, and she tried to smile, but she couldn't tear her mind away from the thought that this was the man she had used against Magnum. She tried to blink it away but kept seeing the terror that had settled on Magnum's face when his disorientation had told him this man who was currently trying to make her laugh was in danger. Because of her.

"Do you need to go back to the hospital?" T.C. had his arms crossed and looked about ready to carry her back there in his own two arms. She tried to force a smile.

"Of course not. I'm just tired. I didn't get much sleep last night." She had no idea how convincing she was, but they seemed to accept that she wasn't about to keel over.

They stuck around for a short while, telling her how Magnum was doing, sharing the optimistic outlook his doctor had given them, but they quickly offered their goodbyes. She watched them leave, leaning close to each other as if whispering. She tried to frown and figure out what was going on, but her head was throbbing.

It was barely six, but she could feel her bed calling to her. Of course, as soon as she closed her eyes, Magnum's face swam into her mind's eye and her ears rang with the threats she had made, the pleas Magnum had muttered. After nearly two hours, she got back out of bed again. Not even eight o'clock and she was already giving up on the idea of sleeping. Wasn't that just wonderful. And there was no way she would be able to put off going to see Magnum in the morning. She wanted to see him, to see for herself that he was fine, that he wasn't going to be left with a permanent disability as a result of the lucky shot or her shoddy handiwork.

Even so, she couldn't stop her mind from running in circles. When Magnum woke up, they had all been in his room, she with a distinct lack of approval from her own doctor, and Magnum had been disoriented, confused. The last thing he remembered, he had told them, was jumping off the boat and hoping Higgins was able to hold her breath long enough to get out of firing range. Everything after that was foggy, and he wasn't even sure how long they had been in the water. If he didn't remember the things she had said, then it didn't matter. But she felt so guilty over it that, clearly, it did matter. But why should it matter if no one else knew about it? Why should she destroy everything by telling everyone the truth about her fantastic, Magnum-saving achievement? How could she keep it to herself?

After drinking so much coffee she thought her heart would jump out of her chest, Higgins still wasn't any closer to figuring out what she should do. As soon as she'd realised that, in his mind, Magnum was back in the camp in the Korengal, she should have tried to get through to him, to snap him back to reality. The hours that they had spent in that shack had been full of fear for him, and that was her fault. And even if he didn't remember it consciously, she was pretty sure his subconscious would soon be playing merry hell with him as a result.

And there it was. She was sure that his hallucination must have dredged up the nightmares that he had once told her plagued him for months after their escape. And he would have no idea why. She couldn't stand that. The thought that he would be facing days, maybe weeks, of nightmares that would wake him screaming, that he wouldn't understand why it was happening, that was the kick she needed. He needed to know what she had done, and she would just have to face the consequences.

...

Magnum had been pleased to see Higgins walk into his room until he took a good look at her. Rick had just finished telling him that he and T.C. were worried about her and, as he looked at her, he understood why. Her normally fair skin looked sickly pale, and her eyes were dull and edged with purple. He watched as Rick, who had been lounging in the visitor's chair with his feet on the edge of the bed, leaped up as he saw how utterly exhausted Higgins looked.

"Take a seat, Higgy," he said gently, ushering her to the chair.

She sat with a sigh, and Magnum shared a worried look with his two friends. He was starting to think he must have forgotten something important, that something must have happened that had driven Higgins to such a state.

"Sorry." The word was a sigh. "I didn't sleep well last night but…" She glanced Magnum's way as she paused. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

He smiled at the admission. "I'm doing fine." He wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but he wasn't sure how she would react and, before he could up his mind, the door opened again.

"I was hoping you'd both be here." Katsumoto nodded to them all as he walked in. "We picked up Roe early this morning. I was hoping to go over your statements, fill in a few of the blanks."

"We'll head off then, leave you adults to your talk."

Magnum grinned at Rick and T.C. as they held up hands in farewell. He was pretty sure they wouldn't be going far, that their concern for Higgins would see them sticking close by. He'd be surprised if they even shut the door.

"I'm not sure what else I can add." Magnum shifted carefully to a more comfortable position, feeling a slight ache picking up in his leg. "I still don't really remember anything after swimming for a while. Doc says, between the blood loss and the concussion, I probably won't." He looked over at Higgins and couldn't miss the tension that was thrumming through her. Her eyes were locked on the floor and her lips were pressed so tightly together they were white. Glancing up, Magnum could see Katsumoto looking at her worriedly too and wondered if they really needed to rehash their stories or if Rick or T.C. had managed to persuade Katsumoto to help them figure out what was bothering Higgins so badly.

"Higgins? I only got the bare bones in your statement." Katsumoto had his pen poised over a clean page in his notebook.

Magnum listened as Higgins recounted the entire sorry affair clearly and precisely, just as she had been trained to do. But after she got to the part where she pulled Magnum from the water, the flow of words seemed to slow a little.

"After we reached the shack…" She caught her breath suddenly, as if gasping. "I don't see why it would matter. Roe wasn't there; he didn't follow us."

"If you want the charges against Roe to stick, I need to have all the details." The detective's voice was so gentle that Magnum nearly missed how manipulative the words were.

He gave a small nod of appreciation at the tactic; obviously they were right to be concerned about Higgins. And if his experience had taught him anything, it was that bottling everything up inside only ended badly.

In the chair beside him, Higgins had gone back to staring fixedly at the floor. As he watched, she squared her shoulders as if preparing for a fight and took a deep, slow breath.

"After we got to the shack, I tried to administer first aid. To clean and debride the wound and control the bleeding." It seemed like she was trying to detach herself from the memory, but it didn't last long. As she started repeating what Magnum had been saying, her eyes started to fill with tears. She ignored them and kept right on talking, describing the amount of blood he had been losing, the way he had pushed her away. His eyes flickered down to the plaster around her wrist, and he felt a spasm of guilt.

"I told him I would shoot his friend if he didn't hold still." The words seemed to fall into the room.

Magnum caught a glimpse of Katsumoto's face, eyes wide, as his head snapped up to look at Higgins.

She looked devastated, as if the very core of her being had been rocked. "I…" Her voice quivered over the single syllable, and the only time Magnum had heard her sound so broken before was when she had admitted what the Viper had taken from her. He reached and grabbed her hand, and she looked at him, a tear spilling down her cheek.

"Magnum… I'm so sorry for what I did."

He offered her a smile, a small, genuine smile, that he hoped would calm her down a little. "You did what you had to do. You saved my life." She opened her mouth but he cut her off, not willing to listen to her beat herself up. "It was an impossible situation and your only other choice was to let me die." He spoke the harsh words deliberately, aiming to shock her into accepting her own actions. In the corner of his eye, he saw a hand appear in the doorway and beckon to Katsumoto who quickly but quietly exited the room, pulling the door closed behind him. "Besides, I don't even remember you saying it."

"I don't think I'll ever forget it."

He saw the truth of the statement in her eyes, heard it in her voice, and wondered for a second which of them had really come off the worst in this latest absurd adventure of theirs. Then he made a snap decision and tugged on her hand.

"Come here," he said quietly, lifting his free hand in an offer. To his amazement, Higgins moved willingly off the chair and lifted herself onto the bed. "It's okay, Higgy," Magnum soothed, hoping it wouldn't be too long before she believed him. They sat in silence for a while, her head resting on his shoulder and him rubbing her arm until her head grew heavy against him.

The door slowly slid open, and Magnum smirked as T.C.'s face appeared in the gap, a curious eyebrow raised high. He flashed a thumbs up, and Magnum huffed, quickly smothering the laugh for fear of disturbing Higgins. The door closed again, and Magnum shook his head with a grin. He really did know the best people.


End file.
